Return from within (the firewall)

First and foremost, apologies for such a long break from writing on the blog. I guess I will just publicly lament my incredibly slow rate of posting blogs and pictures from India (now four months old) and the entire spring semester in Changzhou. My recent lapse, as alluded to in the title is because Witopia, the VPN program I use to get around the Chinese firewall expired about three weeks ago. Before that I took a birthday trip to Hong Kong with 真真 (she turned the big 23 on May 12) for a week or so. I choose to pay for a VPN program instead of a free proxy (which is what most Chinese people use) because it is more reliable, provides customer service, and is much more safe/secure than lots of the proxies. Unfortunately, finding a VPN service that I like wasn't a quick process (I didn't renew Witopia-a great program-because it only bills annually).

much easier to cross than the Great Firewall

The past month hasn't been too noteworthy, so the India pictures and updates will continue; because, well, India was an amazing and crazy country and is more interesting than hearing about the school of foreign language faculty basketball team going 2-3 the second year in a row at the inter-faculty basketball tournament. I was most proud of not my playing (nothing to be proud of there) but of my improved trash-talking skills due to another year in China. I even got the refs to laugh at my trash-talking once or twice. Great success. So, I've got a month to go before my contract is up, as well as my time in China. If you haven't heard, I am in the middle of applying to the Peace Corps, which is an excruciatingly long process. I should be headed back to the land of the free and the home of the brave in early July. Until then, it's all the rice I can eat and smog I can inhale.